Saying U.S. newspapers “are afraid to talk truth to power,” Craigslist founder Craig Newmark hinted that he’s about to launch a major online journalism project within the next few months that will copy the successful “wisdom of the masses” approach to classified advertising and apply it to journalism.

Newmark made his remarks before the Oxford University business school earlier this week, and the British newspaper the Guardian reported the details.

Craigslist.org has become one of the 50 most-popular sites on the Internet thanks in large part to a community that has arisen around free classified and personal ads. But the free classifieds model Craigslist has helped popularize has also hurt newspapers and cost industry jobs, a fact Newmark owned up to in his speech.

“The faster that the newspaper industry develops new forms of delivery — flexible screens connected to your cell phone — the faster important jobs can be preserved,” he said.

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